Jake Helgren

(On Cable TV, October 2020) There’s not a lot to say about Love Exclusively, a very familiar romantic comedy set against Los Angeles music stardom. Our protagonist (Haley Webb) is the usual pretty-but-not-gorgeous brunette tailored not to threaten its target audience, playing a journalist with a personal history with one of the biggest stars on the film’s music scene. She gets the assignment to kindle a romantic relationship between that guy and another musical superstar, but the screenplay clearly has different ideas in mind. (Fortunately, the B-couple ends up being composed of the protagonist’s roommate and the other music star, so it all works out.)  Thanks to writer-director Jake Helgren, the expected plot elements are all there: the gentle romantic antagonism of the first act, the second-act attraction that both leads deny, the lies exposed late in the third act, and the everyone’s-happy conclusion. Don’t watch if you’re expecting anything interesting about the music business. At least the film is cleanly shot, with the colour of its Southern California setting reflecting well on the somewhat pedestrian direction. Clearly a Hallmark production, Love Exclusively is tailored to be an easy-to-watch romantic comedy (perhaps best suited for background watching, considering how empty it feels on a dedicated watch) meant to make audiences happy through obvious platitudes and a neatly wrapped-up romance. Not great, not good, not bad.